Anouk had made her decision about whether their situation was reparable. At some point, I imagined, I would have to do the same.
“In the beginning it was so much fun,” she continues. “Everything with him was exciting. But then we had Sacha, and I grew up and he didn’t. He wasn’t ready to be a father. He wasn’t ready to be a husband. He didn’t know how to be an adult. How to put someone else’s needs before his own.” She trails off for a moment. And I picture her in her villa at the newly opened Amanemu resort. Serene, minimalist, surrounded by hills and hot springs, and perched on the side of a bay. A million miles from moist, flat Florida.
“Anyway,” she says. “I’m glad I didn’t feel like I needed to hold on to him.”
“I think that says a lot about your strength,” I say.
“Maybe. Or maybe I just leave when things are no longer great.”
The following night I endeavor to sort through the few boxes stashed in my bedroom closet. Before fleeing the States, I had packed up my childhood memorabilia: photos, yearbooks, college essays, baby clothes. I’d had the need to hold on to so many things. Over the years, I’d edited painstakingly. Tossing, donating, lugging back to France. But there is one box, way in the back, markedBOO, that I’d never dared to open. Until now.
I hesitate only slightly before dragging it out and slicing the packing tape. And there, inside, are all the ways I’d tried to hold on to Lorry Kenter. Snapshots and sonnets and love letters. The one he gave me after dinner at Kelley and Ping, just before I left for Cabo. The journal he crafted for my twenty-fifth birthday. Inside, the pressed daisy from the first time we made love. A hand-engraved cuff bracelet. The poem he wrote and messengered to Didier’s studio after meeting me on the train. A mixtape with all our favorites: Pearl Jam and Dinosaur Jr. The Verve Pipe and Sade. And Jodeci, of course. Always Jodeci. The biker shorts he once left at my apartment. The fabric holding on to his scent long, long after he was gone. I knew I would never wash them. Inhaling the crotch was like a drug, an elixir.
But now, splayed before me, all these varied parts of him—the letters, the photos, the tapes—had begun to smell like dust. Like age. Like something that had already moved on. Even the crotch of hisshorts. The specific Lorryness given way to the scent of stale paper and ink. Detritus. The last of him, gone.
No, I think. I am still not ready.
And so I return every last item to the box, and replace it in the back of the closet.
Maybe next time.
On the flight back to Los Angeles, wedged between both kids on their respective devices, I mull over my conversations with both my mother and Anouk. About being able to adapt. About strength and needing to hold on to things. About the desire to leave when things are no longer great. And for all my complaining about feeling untethered in LA, maybe acclimating is a choice. Maybe it’s just something I need to commit to. And so while I may not have ultimately made up my mind about François, I needn’t flee to Paris just yet.
XXXIV.HIKE UP YOUR SKIRT A LITTLE MORE.
CABO SAN LUCAS. 1996.
FRIDAY. LATE.
As the girls made their way through the tangle of winding, palm-lined paths, down toward the oceanfront, Cecilia was aware of how much shorter her gait was than Anouk’s. She was speed walking-jogging-shuffling to keep up. Her sandals beating a discordant rhythm on the stone walkway. She’d begun to feel woozy from the erratic movement. The tequila, the snaking path, the sight of the blood, the fluttering of Anouk’s silk dress—at once surreal and vivid, like an Enrique Badulescu, she thought. The conversation at dinner was still replaying in her head. “There’s always one. On every job, there’s always one.”
“Are you okay?” Anouk had stopped suddenly, Cecilia nearly bumping into her from behind.
“I hope so.”
“You’re breathing heavily.”
“You walk fast.”
Anouk laughed. “Hold your hand up, above your heart. Not down by your side,” she directed, reaching out for Cecilia’s arm and folding it gently at the elbow. “I’ll walk slower, promise.”
Cecilia knew the accommodations at Querencia Bay far exceeded those at Casa Azul, but she was shocked by just how much. It took a momentto unstick herself from the entrance when Anouk opened the door to her oceanfront suite. The airy great room with its marble floors and doors of glass looking out onto the sea. The palette of soothing blues and beige. To Cecilia, it even smelled expensive. And she could not help but feel envious, reflecting on the cramped space and stucco ceiling back at her motel. The waxy floral bedspread that had certainly seen some things. The faulty air conditioner that dripped water onto the uneven tiles below. The fluorescent bathroom lighting. Cecilia had worked assiduously to get into an Ivy League school. She knew plenty about her chosen craft, and yet this close to thirty she was still paying her dues. And here was this teenager, who was staying in the kind of resort Cecilia could only dream of because she’d randomly won the genetic lottery.
“The kit is in the bathroom,” Anouk said then. “I’ll go and get it. Make yourself at home.”
Cecilia smiled. She did not want to resent this young woman who had gone out of her way to be kind the entire shoot when others hadn’t. Cecilia was better than that. “Thank you,” she added, warmly.
“Pas de problème.”
As Anouk disappeared into the bedroom, Cecilia made her way through the modern space. To one side facing out toward the glass doors, there was a large sofa and ottoman. To the other a dining area, a credenza, a wet bar. Scattered across the dining table Cecilia noticed a cluster of note cards, covered in elegant line drawings. Seascapes, palm trees, clouds. Was this the collage Anouk had mentioned last night on the beach? “Still lifes,” she had said, to hold on to her memories of a certain place.
With her good hand Cecilia traced her fingers over the linen paper, the black lines Anouk had drawn. Anouk was an enigma. A nut she wanted to crack.
The French girl appeared then in the entrance to the bedroom, a toiletry bag in hand. She’d removed her shawl and pinned her hair back into a messy updo, bringing into relief her sharp shoulders, her exquisite collarbones. Cecilia was suddenly aware of the material of Anouk’s dress: the way it moved over her breasts, the plane of her stomach, her hips. She felt a wave of something travel through her body—immediate, intense—and did her best to ignore it.
“Did you draw these?”
“I did.”
